Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Every day in February I'm out and about walking and listening to the wisdom of nature and it's a grey old February day today.
I'm walking through a muddy field and as I was walking along this field I looked up and there's a hillside above me.
Now I'm in Dorset at the moment and the hills here are very different from the hills in Devon.
In Devon,
Particularly where I live on Dartmoor,
The hills are very jagged with granite and we call them tors,
The granite boulders that are at the top of the hills and there's a real sense of roughness and wildness to them.
In Dorset the hills,
And it is a very hilly county,
But the hills are more gentle,
They're more rounded,
They almost look as though they've been crafted lovingly by a hand out of clay and as I was walking along at the foot of this hill following a footpath I spied at the top of the hill a tree that was standing quite magnificently silhouetting against the sky and I looked at the hill and I thought it's far too steep for me to climb up that hill to see the tree so I carried on but there's something I find when I settle in my mind is that I hear something more deeper and I felt the draw and the call of the tree and it's the only way I can describe it,
It just felt as though I was being called to go and see the tree.
So I climbed up the hill very slowly,
It was very very steep and I got to the top and I realised it was an oak tree and it's hard to tell at this time of year because the leaves of course haven't come back,
It's still bare branches silhouetting against the sky but I could tell by the trunk,
The knobbly gnarly trunk and the just stature of the tree that this was an oak tree.
Now in the UK in the old Celtic culture oak trees were sacred,
Sacred trees and I just felt something about this tree that felt sacred and I put my hand out and I touched the trunk and I spent time communicating,
Connecting with it and it sounds really odd to say those words out loud doesn't it,
To say I was communicating and connecting to a tree but that is the truth of it and I felt something deep within me,
In my in my belly,
This sense of connection,
Of being part of the whole and it was like this tree was some kind of portal that allowed me by touching it to feel that within me,
I was connected to it,
I was the tree,
The tree was me.
It was a very very special moment and I love nature for this,
This way that nature has to bring me back to that space within that allows me to deeply,
Deeply connect,
Connect with myself and when I talk about connecting with myself I'm not talking about connecting with the image of Liz,
The identity of Liz within me,
I'm talking about connecting with true self,
The deeper self,
The self,
The energy,
The energy of life that creates everything.
I am not Liz connecting with the energy of life,
I am not Liz connecting with the energy of life,
I am the energy of life and it is having an expression through me and through the beautiful tree and in that moment I had a felt experience of that.
I felt it in my heart,
It wasn't a cognitive,
Analyzing,
Working out belief,
It was just a felt ordinary knowing of being connected,
Of being that connection.
So today my invitation to you is go out and see whether anything in nature is inviting you,
Any particularly trees I find where you can touch the solidness of their trunk and just see what there is for you to hear within yourself.
As you listen within yourself,
See what you're called to connect with and then see what emerges within you,
What is the message that you are meant to hear.
